Enhancing Customer Experiences: Zyxware's 2023 Journey in Martech, Automation, and Analytics
Engineering Impactful Digital Experiences
At Zyxware, our mantra is "Experience, Engineering, and Impact." We are committed to crafting digital experiences that resonate with businesses and their audiences. Our engineering team is dedicated to building adaptable and long-lasting digital platforms, ensuring they evolve with ongoing needs and stand the test of time.
Leveraging our expertise in digital consulting and engineering, particularly for Marketing and Communication teams, we expanded our scope two years ago by establishing a dedicated Martech and Automation unit. This new direction allowed us to diversify our service offerings, enabling us to address a wider range of client challenges with comprehensive and innovative solutions
Martech and Automation - 2023: A Year of Building Strength and Expertise
The year 2023 was important for the Martech and Automation unit. It was a year of building strength, expertise, and market presence. We have successfully completed many projects within the Martech and Automation theme, encompassing Martech, automation, and web analytics. Contributing what we are doing to the wider community is part of our handbook. We have shared the templates, scripts, and solutions that have significantly optimized our workflow, and we hope these will benefit others in the industry. This article covers the core activities we have executed and the expertise we have generated through these activities.
Web Analytics: Mastering the Transition from UA to GA4
The year 2023 started with a series of projects centered around the migration from Universal Analytics to GA4, along with Universal Analytics backup initiatives. These projects often involved large and complex systems, encompassing hundreds of custom dimensions and events. Through these undertakings, our team gained extensive knowledge in Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager, which we have documented and shared in a series of articles. This effort aimed to cultivate a comprehensive knowledge base around GA4, providing assistance and insights for those navigating the intricacies of Web Analytics.
In response to Universal Analytics ceasing data processing in 2023 and its subsequent shutdown announcement, we undertook an evaluation of various methods to preserve UA data for our clients. This led to the development of specialized Python scripts tailored for downloading UA reports. Additionally, we recognized Matomo as a suitable tool for automating the backup of UA data, aligning with the needs of a significant portion of organizations. Our efforts in this domain have been well-received, enabling us to successfully back up websites with substantial traffic volumes, exceeding 150K page views per month.
Learnings from our Web Analytics projects
- How to Track the Performance of Your New Content vs Old Content
- How Zyxware Leverages Looker Studio and Google Sheets to Set Up GA4 Annotations
- How to Track Conversion of Hubspot Forms Embedded in Your Drupal Website on GA4 using Google Tag Manager
- Google Universal Analytics Data Archiving
- More articles on GA4 and Web Analytics
Marketing Automation and CRM
HubSpot: A Strategic Tool for Automation
Regarding CRMs, the focus has been primarily on integrations. For the past three years, we have extensively utilized HubSpot and, in 2023, we expanded our capabilities by becoming a HubSpot Solutions Partner. This partnership enabled us to offer HubSpot services packaged with our digital experience platforms (DXP) and personalization services. The synergy between HubSpot’s automation capabilities, Drupal’s flexibility, and our personalization engine has allowed us to develop an effective lead generation system. This system was first implemented on our website, www.zyxware.com, and upon validating its effectiveness, it was then extended to our clients. Our endeavors with HubSpot also involved conducting various experiments to optimize forms and CTAs for better conversion rates.
Mautic: Leveraging Free and Open Source for Marketing Automation
Mautic, a free and open-source marketing automation tool, has played a key role in our outbound marketing campaigns. By adopting Mautic, we were able to realize significant savings in licensing costs while taking full advantage of the benefits of free and open-source software.
PipeDrive: Advancing Sales Automation
2023 marked the initiation of our services in sales automation. We developed the infrastructure capable of sending over 1000 cold email sequences per day, maintaining a high deliverability rate. Our team has built expertise in setting up email security systems like SPF, DMARC, and DKIM to enhance deliverability. The email warm-up process was also instrumental in achieving positive results. Responses from outbound campaigns are channeled into PipeDrive, facilitating efficient management by our inside sales team. Additionally, we have integrated a dashboard in Looker Studio, connecting Google Sheets, Smart Lead, and PipeDrive, thereby simplifying report accessibility for campaign owners.
Learnings from our CRM and Marketing Automation projects:
- HubSpot Form Optimization: Should You Use Full Name or First/Last Name Fields?
- How to Track Conversion of Hubspot Forms Embedded in Your Drupal Website on GA4 using Google Tag Manager
- More articles
Website Personalization Engine
Our development of a website personalization engine has resulted in an efficient system that integrates seamlessly with our existing digital infrastructure. Designed for compatibility with both Drupal and WordPress, it facilitates smooth integration with various platforms including HubSpot, Optinmonster, Google Analytics, Looker Studio, Mautic, and Apache Unomi. The year 2023 was dedicated to testing this system. Implementing it on our website, www.zyxware.com, has provided valuable insights, contributing to its continuous refinement and confirming its functional capabilities. The system is now fully operational and ready for integration with any Drupal or WordPress website.
Personalization Demo:
- Aligning Web Content with Email Prompts
- Progressive User Experiences Based on Visitor Persona
- Referral-driven Content Adaptation
- Valuing Long-term Relationships
- Contextual Solutions Post-Ad Click
- Geo-specific Solutions
- More articles
Outbound Sales Campaings
2023 saw us dive into developing and launching outbound sales campaigns. At the heart of these efforts lies personalized outreach via email and LinkedIn. Through extensive exploration and ongoing refinement, we've built a robust system for conducting outbound sales, driven by the integration of multiple tools.
Learnings and Integrations on Outbound Campaigns:
- Optimizing Marketing Efforts: Enhancing Email Marketing with Automation
- Prioritize and Pick Unique Contacts from a Company for Your Cold Outreach Campaign Using Spreadsheets
- How to Extract Data from LinkedIn Job Application Emails
- How to Extract Email Address from Resumes
Advancements in Collaboration Tools
Mattermost has been our go-to platform for daily communication, and in 2023, we explored its potential beyond conventional use. Our focus was on enhancing its utility across the organization. Through strategic integrations, we transformed Mattermost into a versatile system that now efficiently serves the needs of various departments, including HR, IT operations, and the Project Management Office.
With this experience and new capability we have now introduced a new service line centered around the integration of collaboration tools like Mattermost, Slack, and others with various departmental tools. This service is designed to streamline digital transformation initiatives by enhancing communication and collaboration across the organization.
Digital transformation is fundamentally about people, data, and collaboration. Leveraging our accumulated expertise in tools and systems that enable data collection, collaboration, and productivity, we have identified and tailored a suite of tools and systems that can seamlessly align with your business needs. These tools are adaptable for immediate integration or can be customized with minimal adjustments to meet specific requirements.
Focus on Automation and Rapid Prototyping
In our ongoing pursuit of innovation in automation, 2023 marked a significant shift towards leveraging the capabilities of no-code and low-code systems for rapid prototyping. Recognizing the challenges and limitations often associated with traditional custom software development, which can be both time-consuming and costly, we embraced a more agile and cost-effective approach.
The traditional route of custom software development, involving a comprehensive team of business analysts, technical architects, developers, and testers, often leads to extended development cycles and escalating costs. This process, typically spanning several months, may result in a system that requires continuous adjustments and refinements, especially as new requirements emerge during actual use.
To address these challenges, we have pivoted towards an innovative approach using no-code and low-code platforms. These rapid application development tools enable us to swiftly construct functional applications, significantly reducing development time and costs. Our methodology involves working closely with clients in an agile manner, replicating existing workflows into these flexible systems. We start with a basic version, which can be delivered within a short timeframe, and then continuously refine it based on client feedback and usage patterns.
This approach accelerates the development process and offers a scalable and adaptable solution. Clients can opt to continue with the subscription-based model for these platforms or transition to custom applications for specific functionalities, providing a balance between immediate efficiency and long-term scalability.
We utilized a variety of tools including Airtable, Google AppSheet, Trello, Notion, PipeDrive, HubSpot, AppScript and Google Sheet to rapidly build systems that enhance our team's efficiency. Our commitment to this approach reflects our dedication to delivering innovative, agile, and cost-effective automation solutions to our clients.
Learnings from Low Code, No Code Automation:
- Low Code, No Code Solution for an IT Support Desk with Mattermost, Redmine and Make
- Automate Custom Field Creation in Pipedrive with Google Sheets
- Agility and Efficiency: No Code Tools in Drupal Web Development
- Driving Efficiency and Collaboration: The Power of Automation with Pipedrive, Notion, Make, and Mattermost
- Automating Web Testing with Playwright: An Example Testing a Job Listing Application
- More articles on automation
Expanding the Capabilities of Drupal as a Digital Experience Platform
Drupal has been the central system of the lead generation platforms we provide to our clients. Our expertise lies in creating well engineered platforms that integrates between Drupal and a range of Martech tools, effectively elevating Drupal beyond its traditional capabilities. This approach allows us to transform Drupal into a more dynamic and impactful platform, tailored to meet the diverse and evolving needs of organizations. By pushing the boundaries of what Drupal can achieve, we are committed to unlocking new potentials in digital experience and lead generation for our clients.
Experimenting with Generative AI
Throughout the past year, our team has actively engaged in exploring the potential of various Generative AI systems. This exploration included conducting experiments with local installations of interfaces like chat with PDF functionalities, along with trials of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT and Mistral. We have also explored the frameworks like LangChain to gauge their capabilities.
While these endeavors initially began as experimental, they have laid the groundwork for a more profound commitment in 2024. Our focus is now set on deeply integrating Generative AI tools into our operational framework. This strategic shift aims to leverage the power of AI to accelerate and enhance our workflows and processes, driving efficiency and innovation in our approach to project management and service delivery.
Contributions to the Community
In our commitment to sharing knowledge and resources, we have made a practice of publishing our developments and experiments on our GitHub repository and our website. Below is a summary of our contributions to the community:
- LinkedIn Job Post Detail Extractor: A tool developed using Google AppScript to extract details from email notifications of LinkedIn job posts.
- Campaign Analytics Dashboard: This utility, built with Google AppScript and Google Sheet, fetches campaign analytics data from InstantlyAI.
- PipeDrive Custom Field Automation Script: A script designed to automate the creation of custom fields in PipeDrive.
- PipeDrive Data Import Utility: A Google Sheet-based tool for importing data into PipeDrive.
- Google App Scripts for Various Purposes: A collection of scripts designed to fulfill diverse functional requirements.
- Google Sheet-Based Reminder System: A utility leveraging Google Sheets to set up reminders.
- Universal Analytics Data Downloader: A Python script crafted to download data from Universal Analytics Reports.
- Broken Link Checker Appscript: An Appscript integrated with a spreadsheet to identify and report broken links.
- Contacts Filtering: A Google Sheet template for prioritizing and selecting unique contacts from a company for your cold email outreach campaign.
- Automating Web Testing with Playwright: An Example of Testing a Job Listing Application
Looking Ahead to 2024
As we step into 2024, excitement fuels our vision. The past year has been a catalyst for learning and growth, and we're ready to build on that momentum. Innovation and expansion guide our path, promising new challenges and possibilities in the digital realm. We're committed to exploring cutting-edge technologies, refining our services, and sharpening our expertise. The future is an open book, and at Zyxware, we're eager to write its next chapter, driving digital transformation and crafting impactful solutions for our clients and the community.
Interested in learning more about the work we do? Looking for a digital consultation? We invite you to connect with our team and explore how our expertise can align with your digital aspirations.
